Product Description

March 6, 2035. Motoko Aramaki is a hyper-advanced cyborg, a counter-terrorist net security expert heading the investigative department of the giant multi-national, Poseidon Industrial. Partly transcending the physical world and existing in a virtual world of networks, Motoko is a fusion of multiple entities and identities, deploying remotely controlled prosthetic humanoid surrogates around the globe to solve a series of bizarre crimes. Meanwhile, Tamaki Tamai, a psychic investigator from the Channeling Agency, has been commissioned to investigate strange changes in the temporal universe, brought about by two forces, one represented by the teachings of a professor named Rahampol, and the other by the complex, evolving Motoko entity. What unfolds will be all in a day's work...a day that will change everything, forever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123994 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this brilliant and difficult sequel, Masamune revisits the future, cyborg-dominated world detailed in the original manga. While Batou, the gruff cyber-security operative from volume one, makes an appearance, this new work is more of a meditation on the first book's central theme—the melding of cybernetic technology, human personality and the spiritual "ghost" or life force at its essence—than a continuation of the original story. Book one ended after Major Kusanagi, Batou's sexy cyborg commander, downloaded her "self" into a bodiless, "self-aware" artificial intelligence. Now Masamune focuses on another beautiful cyborg, Motoko Aramaki, chief security officer for a giant multinational conglomerate. Aramaki digitally transfers her personality and capabilities between cyborg bodies stashed around the world, as she attacks industrial spies, assassins and cyber-hackers while keeping up a steady stream of digital communications with various robotic assistants and her secretary back at the office. Once again Masamune attempts to assay the virtual terrain where technological entities meet the essence of human spirituality, connecting the mythology of sci-fi machinery to both the metaphysics of religion and the timeless allure and complexity of Asian creation-myths. The color and b&w graphics are stunning, brilliantly evoking the nonvisual world of data transmission. While his story can be confusing, Masamune has created one of the most thoughtful and gorgeous manga ever produced. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The long-awaited sequel to the 1990s smash hit manga Ghost in the Shell certainly won't disappoint the fans. On the surface, the story is a cyber-espionage caper in which Motoko Aramaki, heroine of the first book and now a hyperadvanced cyborg, uses all of her resources, real and virtual, to investigate a series of strange attacks against her employers, Poseidon Industrial. As the mystery deepens, however, characters and reader discover that there is more here than meets the eye, and that leads characters and reader to question what intelligence and existence really are. As the questions mount, Man-Machine Interface becomes an awesome display of story and art working in tandem to lay the reader flat. The art has a kinetic energy that flows through the pages with a power that just sweeps one up. The story, meanwhile, exerts great crossover appeal to fans of the cyber-punk, tech-noir fiction of the likes of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson. Tina Coleman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Great addition to the GitS series
After reading many of the reviews about a convoluted story, I was interested to check it out myself. I really like the technological aspect of MMI. I thought GitS 1 and 1.5 were a little heavy on the detective work, and far too light on the technology. Artwork is amazing and the story keeps a good pace. Great addition to the GitS storyline.

excellent manga
GiTS 2 is a great manga, with alot of full colour pages and very high quality drawings with amazing digital rendering. It's also a long, intelligent and complex story that takes a good few sessions to get through. When the first volume was released, it was ahead of its time, and concepts like 'the internet' and 'hackers' were not as well understood as they are now. This volume has gone a step further and introduced more original concepts in the advanced, networked world of ghost Ghost in The Shell. I'm sure it will all make sense in another 10 years time.

I'm glad I bought this, it's a different style to the animated series as it focuses on Motoko rather than section 9. If you can't grip the hectic pace of the story, at least the artwork is awesome.

The only one?
I might be the only one but my biggest turn off was not the convoluted story , but the art. His hand drawn back and white art in the middle was amazing as always, but the digital environments used in so much of the book just did not look good. It all looked like screenshots from a badly rendered CGI movie that had people drawn over top of it. It just looked bad. Now, I admit two things. One, the digital art looked EXCELLENT for the scenes that took place in the Net. It would have been incredible he had drawn more in the B&W style of the first GitS and then CG'ed the Net parts. Anyway the second thing is that I am definitely in the minority with my opinions on the art, and its very possible I am just missing something or being plain ignorant.

Either way, I bought this volume based on everyone's ravings about how good the art was, and it was my a big let down. So this is my counter-point to the other reviews.